I felt there was no real issue with the keyboards examined in the article as well.
Really? That Acer Aspire S7 keyboard is awful. I hate the stupid little arrow keys that are too tiny to hit — no kittens are killed if the arrows alone extend down a row. I use the function keys a lot, too. The horrible arrows have resulted in stretching the entire right side of the keyboard to goofy proportions.
It's also why I avoid big-ass enter boards — moving keys around means I'm guaranteed to constantly hit the spot where the key should be, and get something else. shift instead of \, # instead of backspace etc.
Laptop keyboards are an endless source of frustration with all the idiotic ideas people come up with. My personal laptop has home, page up etc down the far right (where they belong), but Windows at the top right! \ is also in the wrong place — the far right column appears to prevent there being enough room for ISO \ and ` is to the right of space. (And this is a 15" machine.)
I guess no layout won't have some degree of suckage, though I've used some really nice laptop layouts.
Besides, not only do you have to worry about the screen, but the surface material (should be a smooth eggshell finish greaseproof plastic, not "porous" plastic or gloss), screen resolution (they're all widescreen, so they all suck unless you're buying it just for YouTube), and the screen itself, as there are some shockingly bad TFT panels on laptops, as well as indicator lights that you can't see or plain aren't there (e.g. no HDD light).
I played with an HP once — lovely smooth pale blue-grey case, indicator lights where you could see them, nice keyboard, great display, port labels on the top of the case so you can locate ports easily ... I was a bit jealous, although it was a little on the large side.
